June 30, 2011

Google Rick Santorum

Rick Santorum has a Google problem—and it’s immediately obvious when a person Googles his name. This derogatory definition of his name resulted from his statement that American citizens do not have a constitutional right to privacy and that society and the family are undermined by certain practices such as polygamy, adultery, and sodomy. In his objection to sodomy, he compared homosexuality to a man having a sexual relationship with a dog.

At that point Dan Savage, now known for the “It Gets Better” campaign to keep LGBTQ young people from committing suicide, created the infamous website with the definition. Last year Savage offered last year to remove the website if Santorum donated $5 million to the gay rights group Freedom to Marry. The website is still up. Incidentally, it’s not entirely a joke. If you’re brave enough to go into the website, you’ll find more information about Santorum.

In the this round’s first GOP presidential candidate debate held in early May, Santorum echoed his strong opposition to same-sex marriage but got lost on the way. Somehow he linked his policy to the Declaration of Independence when he said that the right to life and liberty requires limited government so that people can be free and that this happens only from strong families. “Rights come from God,” he said in explaining why same-sex marriage is wrong.

Would World War II vets want to keep their Medicare? There’s been no polling on that, but Santorum thinks they wouldn’t. In his speech celebrating the 67th anniversary of D-Day, the landing on the beaches of Normandy to take France from the Germans, he talked about how almost 60,000 soldiers fought for freedom. “Those Americans risked everything so they could make that decision on their health care plan,” he said. Now we know: Roosevelt sent the soldiers into war to protect them from Medicare.

A disagreement with John McCain about whether torture and George W. Bush led to the discovery of Osama bin Laden landed Santorum into the midst of a ridiculous statement that he kept repeating. “He [McCain] doesn’t understand how enhanced interrogation works. I mean, you break somebody, and after they’re broken, they become cooperative. And that’s when we got this information. And one thing led to another, and led to another, and that’s how we ended up with bin Laden.” Santorum must have known that McCain was repeatedly subjected to torture over his five years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, but he refused to back down from his statements.

Women receive the same lack of compassion from Santorum as McCain’s torture. During a speech at a so-called “crisis pregnancy center” which refuses to accept the possibility of abortion, he ridiculed a health exception for partial birth abortion. Allowing an abortion when keeping the fetus would endanger the woman’s life is just a “phony” excuse, according to Santorum. He went even farther in his assertion that any doctor who performs an abortion, even in the case of rape or incest, should be criminally charged.

As the authority on climate change, Santorum gave his explanation to Rush Limbaugh about why it doesn’t exist: “I believe the earth gets warmer, and I also believe the earth gets cooler, and I think history points out that it does that and that the idea that man through the production of CO2 which is a trace gas in the atmosphere and the manmade part of that trace gas is itself a trace gas is somehow responsible for climate change is, I think, just patently absurd when you consider all of the other factors, El Nino, La Nina, sunspots, you know, moisture in the air.” (In the interview he did make one point that I agree with: “You tell people lies enough and you indoctrinate them enough, of course I’ve got grave concerns.”)

School vouchers is a program that Santorum strongly supported, and he had a good reason. While he lived in Virginia between 2001 and 2004, he enrolled his five children in the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School at a cost of $100,000 to the school district. It’s the law in Pennsylvania: school districts must pay for students who live in their district but enroll in cyber schools. The law doesn’t say that they have to pay for children living in Virginia. Santorum gave the money back—after the school district went to court. He did own a house in the district, and Santorum supporters justified his using the school district’s money by saying that he paid taxes there.

Rick Santorum follows the ultra-conservative party line in both social and fiscal aspects. He does have a much greater concern for the former issue—lots of guns, deport all immigrants, keep the flag from being burned, etc. Unlike other candidates, he hasn’t given any hard figures about lowering taxes except for being more punitive toward seniors in reducing Medicare than Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposal. Not using specifics and just making general noises might be a safer approach because no one can question facts that aren’t there. Further right than Bachmann, he should be loved by the Tea Party—but he’s getting very little press. That’s a bad sign for someone who wants to become the last presidential candidate standing.